Randstad US - FrontRange customer profile

The US subsidiary of Randstad Holding nv, a $22 billion global provider of HR service, has selected FrontRange for building cloud-based automation tools to support its professional services and staffing solutions.

Speaking with IT Decision makers about the problems they're facing, what products they considered to address those problems, what product they chose and why is very useful. These conversations cut directly to the chase and avoid a great deal of catch phrase marketing from vendors.

This time I spoke with David Mora and Kevin Scott of Ranstad US about their selection of management services offered by FrontRange.

(Note: A quick discussion of who FrontRange is and a bit about it's HEAT products and services follows the notes from our discussion.)

Please introduce yourself and your organization.

We're David Mora, Helpdesk Manager and Kevin Scott, Director Technical Support, of Randstad US, a wholly owned subsidiary of Randstad Holding nv, a $22.0 billion global provider of HR services. As the third largest staffing organization in the U.S., Randstad holds top positions in permanent placement, office and administrative, IT and accounting and finance.

It has 5,324 employment experts and puts an average of approximately 100,000 people to work in the U.S. each week, through its network of nearly 1,000 branches and client-dedicated locations.

What were you doing that required this type of technology?

We were using a ticketing solution, which was an older version of HEAT. It was an on-premise version. We needed an off-premise, cloud-based solution. The decision was driven by the development team who were tasked to manage and maintain the servers and software. They wanted to move to a cloud-based solution so they could focus more on developing systems than supporting hardware and software.

We needed a solution both powerful and flexible enough to support both the staffing and professional parts of the overall organization.

What products did you consider before making a selection?

We had reviewed two BMC products, Service Desk Express and Remedy, SysAid, SunView's ChangeGear and Rocket Aldon.

Why did you select this product?

We selected HEAT for several reasons. Some vendors didn't offer a cloud-based solution. The specific criteria we evaluated was power, ease of use, scalability and flexibility. HEAT continually came out on top based on this criteria.

What tangible benefit have you received through the use of this product?

We now have the ability to adapt the system to our business processes. The basic functionality was available out of the box. From there we were able to fine-tune the features without having to go through an extensive development process.

HEAT Service Management also has the flexibility and capabilities that allowed us to build a new module that supported employee on-boarding, off-boarding, and requests for hardware, software or additional system access. The module makes it easy for employees to make IT requests, which can be audited at a later time.

It was much easier to use the HEAT solution to connect employee records, equipment records and build complex reporting and automation processes that allowed integration with change management, asset management and incident management tools. We can take advantage of all of them working together.

The Incident Voice module that we built, allows the caller to be identified and the call can be directed to the appropriate team. This reduces the burden on call center agents.

In essence, a single incident can be recorded and the module can assign multiple tasks to different teams for resolution.

What advice would you offer others who are facing similar circumstances?

Do your due diligence. Make sure the solution you select has the functionality to address your key business needs. Also make sure the solution isn't overly complicated so that the software itself doesn't become a burden.

A bit about FrontRange

FrontRange describes itself as "a leading provider of Hybrid IT Service Management (ITSM) and Client Management software solutions for organizations of all sizes. FrontRange offers a suite of HEAT applications that provide Service Management and Client Management software on-premise and in the cloud.

HEAT manages millions of service interactions and millions of devices every day for more than 15,000 leading organizations around the world. FrontRange customers deliver world-class service while maximizing operational efficiencies with reduced cost and complexity.